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Parallel Feedback Loops: Integrating Your Community

The term innovation opportunity has been discussed by Matthew Aslett, who described it as "the potential to lower development costs for business users, while at the same time raising their potential to focus on innovative development..."

This falls in line with the view that an open model is more efficient, but how exactly is it more efficient, and how does one maximize that efficiency? Does Open Source development lead to the creation of a perfect market? I will attempt to describe how innovation opportunities come about, and how to take advantage of those opportunities. The key would seem to be enhancing the ability to deal with parallel feedback loops that arise as a matter of course from interactions with your user and developer community. Put another way, maximize the surface area of your community and be able to capitalize on these "touches".